On Sunday, we uploaded our parody of The King’s Speech onto YouTube, which has gone down a storm world-wide, becoming the 4th most ret-weeted/shared link on Sunday night in the USA, according to zocial.tv, and which now has over 6,000+ views and has been written up by a number of influential blog sites as ‘The’ way to do social media ‘smarketing‘ as I call it.

On Monday, less than 24 hours later – and in advance of Steve Jobs’ debuting Apples new iPad2, I launched our new King of Shaves iPhone app to the 150+ audience at smartaLIVE – a group of upcoming entrepreneurs, knowledge catalysts and forward thinkers. It’s a very KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) free app, that allows you to 1) Get a free King of Shaves Azor 4 XP razor, 2) Order our Azor Endurium cartridges at a significant discount to the UK RRP, and get them delivered to your door (over £30 can be saved when compared to ordering the equivalent number of Gillette ProGlide cartridges) and 3) It connects you into our Kingdom of Social Media, via links to our Facebook fanpage, our YouTube twitter account and my Twitter feed. It’s already picking up very nice reviews indeed!

Today, our new Azor 5 debuted in-store in Tesco (2 weeks early – they are very quick off the mark) along with our latest in shaving software, the SuperGel – more details on this coming soon. All in all, a most excellent week – despite Gillette spending squillions on ‘tugging and pulling’ people towards the hyper-expensive Fusion ProGlide, our sales are standing up well, and have grown over the past few weeks.

I’m off for a few days R&R next week, back on the UK Shave Grid w/c 14 March, but will be ‘tweetdecking’ off a ‘yacht deck’ next week, as I continue to plan out the continuing globalisation of King of Shaves.

Big respect to our partners in the USA too, Spectrum Brands (Remington) – they’ve had some most excellent news this week with regard to our King of Shaves launch there…

I started reading rave reviews about The Kings Speech almost straight after it aired in December. Garnering almost universal acclaim, it blends history, personal trauma and humour in a captivating, uplifting way – bringing to life an issue that can clearly define an individual’s outlook on life, to a truly Global audience.

It was also, an absolutely perfect, once in a lifetime opportunity, for me (given my name), my brand (King of Shaves), and the challenges we face (going to war against G-G-G…) to make a one-off parody that would debut globally via the social media magic that is Twitter, and hosted for a world-wide audience on YouTube.

I took my son Cameron to see the film on the evening before we were due to shoot our version, and he – like I – loved it. As I told him, “It was WAY better than Fred – The Movie, Cam!”

And I had to make sure, in my own way, our Will King’s Speech spoof/parody version was, the very best it could be. It was shot in just under 5 hours, on the afternoon of Thursday 24th February, and came out of post-production less than 24 hours later. Creative Director was Tiger Savage of the Tiger’s Eye Agency (her first ad for her own shop). It was directed by Stuart Gillies, produced by Mathew Alden and edited by Nick Saunders at The Chop House.

We shot three versions. The one you’ll see on YouTube here another – which ends without me saying “Cut” and, a final one – a Director’s Cut if you like – that runs for 6 minutes, and is the full blown version, where I (forgive me) rewrote the famous speech, introducing my favourite ‘enemy’ Wilkinette, declaring war on “the bondage of over-priced razor blades” – one of my favourite subjects – and talking about being strong in resolve, “not being tugged one way, pulled in the other”. Depending on the the interest in the parody, I may upload this in the future.

It’s always difficult to know how a parody/spoof advert like this will go down with the intended global audience. I hope those who are fans of King of Shaves enjoy it, and those who are yet to know our brand, find my own “Will King’s Speech” engaging enough to discover more about our mission to shave the world better, forever (and avoid being tugged and pulled into buying ever increasingly expensive razor blade cartridges).

Will it win any viral Oscars? Well, the jury for sure will be out on that for a while. But, I sincerely hope The Kings Speech sweeps the board at the Academy Awards, even though it’s up against another film favourite of mine, The Social Network.

So, good luck to Colin Firth and the cast of The King’s Speech.

“God Shave The King”

PS | This is a spoof/parody of The King’s Film speech, and is no way intended to offend anyone who suffers from a stammer. Help on stammering can be found here.
PPS | No Corgi’s were harmed in the making of the film.
P-P-P-S | Eat your heart out, B-B-B-D-D-O.

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